Our View: Pope Francis' formidable task

Saturday

Feb 22, 2014 at 6:58 PM

In the speech that reportedly put the then-Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina over the top with the assembled cardinals at the Vatican a year ago, the soon-to-become Pope Francis said that in order to survive, the Roman Catholic Church needed to stop “living within herself, of herself, for herself.”

If anything describes what led to the ongoing mess that is the church’s clergy sexual abuse scandal, it is arguably that definition of the culture. With each new or reinforced revelation of crimes committed against children, it becomes increasingly clear just how much church leaders lost their way at some point, and how it continues to haunt the institution they represent now. The wildly popular Pope Francis has his work cut out for him in correcting that.

Indeed, it has been a rough year for the Catholic Church thus far. Earlier this month, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child issued a scathing report calling on the Vatican to release whatever records it has regarding the child abusers within its ranks, both past and present, so that law enforcement may hold them accountable, while recommending a number of reforms, including dropping opposition to extending statutes of limitations for criminal prosecution and stopping the practice of having victims sign confidentiality agreements.

In January, the Chicago Archdiocese released 6,000 pages of previously undisclosed documents as part of a court settlement. They revealed decades of Catholic leadership failing to protect children from predatory priests, across multiple administrations — from the current Francis Cardinal George to, disappointingly, the once-much-admired Joseph Bernardin and those before. And just this past week, America’s largest diocese in Los Angeles agreed to pay $720 million to molestation victims and to release its internal files of the allegations that led to this and what it did about them. It’s always the same story: Allegations of a pedophile priest come to the top brass’ attention — in L.A.’s case, Cardinal Roger Mahony — a cover-up begins, information is withheld from police, the priests get away with their crimes and are sometimes even reassigned to continue working with, and sometimes victimizing, other children.

Finally, not just sexual morality is at issue here. This week the archbishop of Newark, N.J., John J. Myers — whom local readers will remember as the former bishop of Peoria, leaving in 2001 — got some unfavorable press attention regarding his diocese’s renovation/expansion of a vacation home that will become his retirement residence. When all is said and done, the 7,500-square-foot home on 8.5 acres will have five bedrooms, multiple fireplaces, an elevator, an indoor exercise pool to go with the large outdoor one, a library, etc., all valued at $1.3 million plus.

In a diocese that can’t keep schools open for lack of funding, this isn’t playing particularly well. Myers — who was an outspoken and sometimes controversial figure in Peoria, as he has been in Newark — may not be able to hold a church candle to the German bishop Pope Francis suspended for his $42 million building spree, but his expensive tastes are hardly in keeping with this new pope’s expressed desire for a return to original mission as a “poor church for the poor.”

It’s worth noting that the church has punched back on some of this stuff, especially the U.N. report, which the Vatican repudiated while chastising the international panel for oversteppings its bounds, going “beyond its competence” in attempting to “interfere” in the “doctrinal positions of the Catholic Church” — they did go off on a few tangents — and attempting to restrict its “exercise of religious freedom.” The report’s conclusions were the result of a preordained prejudice, said the church. Fair enough.

We’d say this:

The breadth and depth of the scandal, across dioceses and states and even nations, makes it quite correct for Pope Francis to label it “the shame of the church.” To be sure, the Catholic Church also has been a force for good in the world, and the vast majority of those who represent it do not deserve this attention, but the betrayal of trust by too many remains breathtaking: They shielded the bad guys at the expense of the most vulnerable, while simultaneously holding themselves up as moral exemplars. No one should ever confuse child abuse with the “exercise of religious freedom.” What was obvious to those in the pews should have been to those in the pulpit. That it apparently was not is a terrible sin — as well as a crime — and you don’t need to wear a collar to say so. If “the Holy See gets it,” as the U.N. panel was told — and everything we’ve seen and heard from him to date suggests he does — evidently some in the employ of the church still do not. Perhaps the church should do as it advises its flock: Fully confess, and seek forgiveness.

May Pope Francis have much luck and divine assistance, if need be, as he tries to restore and renew the moral authority of a church that no longer lives “within herself, of herself, for herself.”